The Moral Issue
by Tate Icasa
Summary: Companion piece to 'Beginning Of An End.' 10 essays based upon the fundamental morals and ethics behind their decisions.
1. Aelita

The Moral Issue

Aelita

We've all been told the same thing. We're supposed to talk about what we were thinking 'Back Then.' Jeremie's parents think we need to _justify_ our actions. Keeping Lyoko a secret as long as we did, not turning Xana off sooner. They blame us for Earth's destruction. Turning Xana off earlier would only have destroyed the chance of human survival. Because at that time, Lyoko would have gone as well. There would have been no place to go.

I think we all must have realized that somehow, even if we didn't know it. On some sunconsciouslevel, we must all have known that Lyoko was Earth's only hope.

I understrand why they think we vioulated our morals. From their point of view, it must seem like we risked the Earth for one little girl. One little girl who wasn't even human. That's not the reason.

I don't know what the reason was. I can't explian it. If it _had_ been only for me, I would have had them turn off Xana, regardless of the consequences. I would have been dead, but Earth would have been safe. Or I would have believed it was safe.

But we knew better. It was only a feeling, but we never considered shutting Xana down. No one ever even brought it up.

I'm not going to justify our actions. Maybe because I can't. Because Earth was destroyed because of it's contact with Lyoko. We could have stopped that, when we went back in time. Earth was destroyed because of Lyoko. But it was saved by Lyoko ask well. And maybe it's better this way.

Because, you see, Earth had too many problems to begin with. Here, we have close to none. Millions died with the earth, but we've saved a piece of it, here with us. Jeremie and our children, two years old, are only the beginning of something wonderful.

Aelita Belpois, age 20


	2. Jeremie

The Moral Issue

Jeremie

My parents finally convinced us to write this. It's been two years since Earth was obliterated.

None of us have been able to break into No-space, so it must be gone. Shut down.

When we helped to create a pathway to Lyoko, we violated several laws of physics. There was no way that wouldn't affect _some_thing. We know that.

We could have said 'no.' We could have just not helped create the pathway. But that would have created a paradox, and we would have been stuck in the past.

But, ofcourse, that doesn't justify the fact that we _did_ put the world in jeopardy. We delivered a part of Earth to Lyoko, in a desperate (or not so desperate) attempt to save it.

We succeeded. We made Lyoko into what steve told us it had been meant to be. A world without danger.

Using Okoyl computer code, we've brought sense to Lyoko. We still have pain, and there is no death. We've made our home as Earth-like as possible for our children.

My parents don't undertand.

If we hadn't kept our secret they would have shut Xana down. Aelita would be dead, we'd all have been obliterated, none of this world would exist.

We wouldn't have our children.

We wouldn't have our world.

We wouldn't have our lives.

We've all heard, at some point, that the end justifies the means. So here's my jusification.

The end is this world Our world without danger. Our children. Our lives. Our tiny piece of our universe.

The means were lying, cheating, breaking rules, and forgetting our morals and ethics for a time.

But we did it.

There's justification enough.

Jeremie Belpois, age 20


	3. Ulrich

The Moral Issue

Ulrich

_My_ parents were actually not that upset about our secret.

Not as upset as Jeremie's or Yumi's parents anyway.

Everyone we saved wants to know what happened, or how long we knew, or something. But the omost common question is always: why?

Why didn't we tell someone? Why didn't we turn Xana doff? Why did we reisk the Earth for one person?

I guess it's time we answer some of those questions.

Why didn't we tell someone? Well, we did, once. No one believed us. So we didn't ell anyone for a while. Then we told someone else. Sissi. Not oo long after that we made our big disappearance. We couldn't go tell anyone. We were too far into it to ever get out. Milly and Timiya found us. We told them not to tell, because _we_ where so far into it. Why did they trust us? I don't know. I don't really care. They did, and that's really all that matters.

Why didn't we turn Xana off? There wasn't really one reason? It started with Aelita. We didn't want to kill her. We could handle Xana. And for a while, we could. Then, things started to get harder. We got caught up in a deeper plot. Things changed. And I can't really say exactly _why_ we kept Xana on. Then we got to Okoyl, and it would have killed Jeremie. And it turned out to be the right decision, even if we didn't know it at the time.

Why did we reik the Earth for one person? Because it was the right thing to do. Because no one died becuase of us that way. No one was killed. We weren't murderers. We weren't going to kill Aelita.

She risked her life for us more times than I can count. More than any of us can count. She sacraficed her safety for us. She even died once.

So it was a fair deal. She risked her life for our world. We risked our world for her life.

Ulrich Stern, age 20


	4. Yumi

The Moral Issue

Yumi

My parents nearly exploded on me when they found out I'd been lying to them for years. I'm pretty sure they understood _why_ we had to lie, but the principle of the thing was. . .off somehow. They, and Jeremie's parents, accused us of numerous things, all of which we admitted to, and justified.

All texcept one, that is.

They accused us of risking the world because Jeremie loved Aelita. Now, of course, it's time to jusify that.

It's not entirely true that Jeremie's love for Aelita was the only reason we risked the world. It was our plaet, we knew what was at stake.

We all loved Aelita. Jeremie _loved_ her, like I love Ulrich and Sissi oves Odd, but se all felt like she was our sister. After a while anyway.

Af first, she was a stranger. She was polite. She was kind. She wormed her way into all of our hearts.

At first, we didn't want to kill her because it would be murder. And then it became we didn't want to kill her beacuse of _her._

You understand, of course, that by this point we were all used to risking our lives. For Aelita, for Earth, they became an interchangable. Our world depened on Aelita. And Aelita depended on us. And we depened on Earth. It was a circle.

It became natural. The lying, the fighting, even time resetting became normal. It didn't seem bad, or wrong to us. We always won. We never even considered that we might fail, and we never did.

It's amazing how parents can make you feel guilty for nothing. Sure, we did some things we're not proud of. And sure, maybe we did some bad things. It wasn't fun, lying all the time. Nor was it easy.

We all did some things we wish we hadn't. But we also did something amazing. We saved a piece of Earth, everyday for years.

And so, yeah, I'm proud.

Yumi Ishiyama-Stern, age 21


	5. Odd

The Moral Issue

Odd

I'm not going to try to justify what we did or why. Justifying it isn't going to help us now. What's done is done.

But I'll do my best to explain it.

We were young. Back Then, we wouldn't have called ourselves young. We were thirteen. Well, Yumi was fourteen, but we were still teenagers, though only barely. We were so young.

We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We were saving the world. It was like a game. A great big video game. We were kids. We were having fun, getting off on the adrenaline rush and the fighting. What kid wouldn't want to be a hero.

For the most part, none of us really understood what was going on. We knew Lyoko was another universe, but we didn't understand _how_ we got there and back. Jeremie did. Aelita did. Sometimes I think Yumi did, too. But most of us had no idea.

The morals behind it? What were morals?

They didn't apply. We were playing a game. It was a game with lives, but we didn't really understand.

We learned as we went. We learned aout the morals, and how they should have applied.

But by then it was too late.

We were too deeply entangled.

Aelita was alive. We knew it as sertainly as we knew _we_ were alive.

We were kids, not murders.

Not consciously, of course, we decided that a few inderect deaths would be better than murder.

It isn't justification.

I know better than that. I can't justify everything we did. There's no way. I can explain it, as best as I can. But be understand now.

Now that's we're no longer kids.

Odd Della Robbia, age 20


	6. Sissi

The Moral Issue

Sissi

For the first year after, well, the end, most of our parents were really mad at us. They kept telling us we should have told them. But they wouldn't have believed us if we had.

No one would have.

The others say they tried to tell people once. No one believed them, big surprise. It was a crazy story. If I dadn't been living it, I wouldn't have believed it myself.

But I _was_ living it.

We all became used to things that anyone else would have called insane. If we'd told anyone, they would have thought we were crazy.

We were kids.

We didn't understand that we were making decisions for the whole world. We didn't kill anyone. Going back in time wouldn't have changed that.

We didn't tell anyone, because they wouldn't have believed us.

We kept our huge secret as long as we could.

On some level, we knew that the secret was important.

Maybe there were morals involved. There probably were. We risked the Earth for Aelita. Ans somewhere, deep inside, I don't think we cared, not really.

If Earth was destoryed, that would have solved all it's problems.

I know that sounds cold. But if Earth were gone, there'd be no one around, no_thing_ around. Nothing doesn't have problems.

Parents can tell us things like 'if earth were gone, how would you live with yourselves?' They can sound as self-rightious as they want to.

If _we_'d destroyed Earth we would have gone with it. We wouldn't have to live with anything.

It sounds horrible, but on some level, we might have all believed it. Or we wouldn't have risked everything.

An, well, things turned our ok, didn't they?

Not even the parents can argue against that.

Elisabeth 'Sissi' Delmas-Della Robbia, age 20


	7. Milly

The Moral Issue

Milly

I can't really say anything for what went on before I joined them. I'm not even sure quite what I can say about what hapened after that.

They told me it was a secret. Well, they told Timiya _and_ me. I can't say quite why we trusted them. Maybe it was the way they talked.

They knew what they were doing. We could tell. They were telling us the truth. We knew that from the beginning. They wouldn't tell us a story like that if it weren't true. And it explained so may things.

Maybe we just wanted to know more.

They said they could rease our memories. At the time, we didn't know how. Now we know, they could have reset time.

It was an amazing story. And once we'd been there, we knew beyond a doubt that it was treu, and we knew that no one would believe us.

Sure, they'd come to the factory. They wouldn't believe us about anything else. They would have shut Xana down.

By that point, it was Jeremie's life, not Aelita's, that was at stake.

Telling anyone would have indirectly made us murderers.

And maybe it was because they trusted us.

They told us their secret. They let us join them. They let us go.

They'd disappeared for years. And when we'd found them, they'd welcomed us. They could have reset time and hidden.

They used to stick up for us. They used to help us. They had tried to make us feel welcome even before they disappeared. They'd gotten us out of trouble with Jim before.

So here's a simple answer. Why did we keep their secret.

We owed them that much. We owe them more now.

Milly Solovieff, age 15


	8. Timiya

The Moral Issue

Timiya

It was a fine line they walked on. And so did Milly and I once we joined them.

We crossed the line, back and forth, so many times. What side of the line did we end up on?

I don't know.

We never killed anyone.

We never lost.But somehow, this still seems wrong.

Earth is gone.

Things can never be the same.

The adults blame the others. Milly and I can tell. Theier parents are really mad. But they have no right to be angry. They have no right to exclude us. They have to right to accuse the others of violating morals.

What the others did, saved the world.

That seems contradictory. The Earth was destroyed. We all know that. It was obliterated and there's no way back.

But Earth has survived. The people of Earth are here. On Lyoko, and on Okoyl.

No one has any right to say that savin gthem was wrong.

We did what was neccessary.

That fine line I mentioned?

The difference between good and evil.

Nothing we ever did was evil.

Some if it was wrong.

Some of it was unethic. Risking Earth for Aelita. But in the end, we made the right decisions.

We go to where we needed to be.

So we never really crossed the line after all.

We just dipped a hand in to test the water.

Timiya Diop, age 15


	9. Hope

The Moral Issue

Hope

I'm an extraordinary child. That's what everybody says.

I understand things that some of the adults don't. And I understand what morals and ethics are.

Sometimes I think that morals and ethics are too strict.

They shouldn't apply in this case.

No one should be asked to decide the fate of their world. No one should be asked to choose between one poerson and a universe. Especially not six kids.

No one should have to make that big a choice.

So when they were forced to, my friends did the only thing they could. They tried to find a middle ground. They tried to save both.

They did a pretty good job, too. They never killed Aelita. And a Xana attack never destoryed Earth.

So the morals don't apply.

When you have only one real choice, you make that choice.

And who's to say whether it's the righ tchoice or not?

Who's to say that it's either good or bad?

Maybe it's neither.

Humans identify good with white and black with bad.

When you can't make a pure white solution, you can settle for the lightest shade of gray.

And as long as you never hit pitch black, it's never a fully wrong choice.

I'm not qualified to identify whether the choice they made us white or gray or black. Neither are their parents. And neither are they. But I'm qualified enough to say, with absolute certainty, that they never hit pitch black.

Hope of Malo-Swamp, age 7


	10. Caramela

The Moral Issue

Caramela

I shouldn't be writing this.

I shouldn't really even be thinking about it.

Not after all the things I've done.

Not after all I did when I was split.

But I played a keyrole. So I agreed to contribute to this project.

Mela did some awful things.

Cara did some awesome things.

I guess what I'm saying is that everybody has two sides.

And even the bad side isn't _all_ evil, or she wouldn't have agree to be fused together again.

Hope said that they had only one choice.

But they didn't.

They had many choices.

That could have refused to build a path to Lyoko, when they went back in time.

They could have letAelita stay dead when she died.

They could have let a a monster destroy Aelita and turned Xana off.

They could have materialized Aelita when the program was accedentally made, before Yumi fell into the void.

They could have turned Xana off and killed Aelita.

They wouldn't have, and they didn't, and I'm not saying they should have. They made the best choice.

Pople can say that Aelita wasn't really 'alive.' And what doesn't live, cannot die.

But they'd be wrong. On both accounts. Knowledge can die. Ideas can die. Concepts like hope or freedom can die. And anyway, Aelita was alive. They could have sacrificed Aelita, or the Earth.

But any sacrifice, no matter how big on small, is still a sacrifice.

Caramela Okoyl, age, unspecified


End file.
